Hurricane Triggers Permanent GSM Switch-Off in Sint Maarten

Hurricanes have hit the Caribbean pretty hard this season and in many countries, mobile networks have been severely damaged. One consequence of that on the Dutch part of Sint Maarten island is that local operator UTS has decided not to restore GSM services at all due to the heavy damage. Instead, they want to migrate their remaining GSM subscribers to their 3G and LTE network. Interesting, this is the first time I’ve heard about a natural disaster as being the reason for ending GSM service.

One thought on “Hurricane Triggers Permanent GSM Switch-Off in Sint Maarten”

  1. they will not have many telematic units in their network. Here in western europe there are nearly 0% of telematic / telemetrie systems that uses 3G or 4G. And the major problem is, that there is no real HW available. Working in the telematic branch i can say that even the US providers have huge problems of having no 4G hardware but need to sell 3G hardware to their customers well knowing that providers are moving frequency spectrum to 4G…

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